and the ATI GPU options also annoy me for the Mac Pro. For the iMac I understand NVIDIAs mobile gpu's are sub standard just now, but they have the fastest desktop one, so why deny those who have the money to ability to use them!? They might just work if you bought one and stuck it in, but I dont know many people willing to rist £350+ to try it out!

I like Macs for "life" stuff. Using the internet, music, IM, e-mail - its just a more chilled out experience.

They just seem underpowered for what you pay and at this point in time i don't think many people can afford "style" at the cost of performance these days.

This along with the MacBookPro battery fiasco has totally put me of buying a mac - and i was so tempted to get a MacBookPro as a laptop!

I've found Macs to be a little too expensive. When I was upgrading my Powerbook last year, I could not justify paying £300 extra for a Macbook over an Acer laptop that had similar specs but didn't run OS X. I like OS X, but I don't think I'd pay that much money just for the ability to run it.

The Mac minis cost a fortune too and I think that they're too expensive for what they are. Tis a shame really.

You aren't just paying for the hardware (but yes it is very expensive), buying an Apple machine is the only legal way to run the Mac OS so the hardware argument is irrelevant if you are looking to run OSX. You can't compare them against anything else because nothing else is supposed to be running OSX. Whether you should be running OSX over Windows or Linux is another argument altogether.

Those 8-core nehalems are not out yet. There's still the dual quad core option anyway.

I know the 8cores aint out yet, but it would just have made a more spectacular announcement, although thinking again, it is very apple, making professionals who dont know about hardware changes and trends - go out and buy this one and in a few months dual 8 core oes come up!

Yes they are expensive, choose your MS PC and move on. There are obviously people who feel the Mac is superior, we/they can't all be wrong. Apple's market share is growing faster than any other manufacturer so they must be doing something right. Granted, it may not be for everyone but to say that it is all unreasonable based on your own personal preference is very short sighted and narrow minded.

Since when did people care about legal? Last time I checked, this forum didn't tolerate that.